CARTOON BREW FILM OF THE WEEK: CLIKCLAK

For the third week in a row, our film of the week hails from France. Very much an unintended coincidence and we’ll certainly start highlighting films from other countries in the coming weeks. This week’s entry, CLIKCLAK is an excellent new student work from France directed by Aurélie Frechinos, Thomas Wagner and Victor-Emmanuel Moulin. A hi-res English version of the film can be found HERE. Like last week’s film TIM TOM, CLIKCLAK was made at the CG school Supinfocom.

For a computer animated short, CLIKCLAK shows a lot of visual restraint. The two robot characters have no color except for their bright blue and green eyes, and this spare use of color is further accentuated by the film’s plain greyscale backgrounds. The characters communicate not with spoken words, but rather with written words that flash across the screen. The written text is well integrated into the film, and serves as a unique visual element that complements the action, such as when the chandelier shakes or when the robots move up and down on the seesaw. Sound efx are also well designed and add a lot to the mood. Screenhead notes that the opening of CLIKCLAK may be a Rube Goldberg-esque nod to the recent Honda ad “Cog”.